Paul Cocksedge: interview

Since setting up his studio with business partner Joana Pinho following his graduation from the Royal Collge of Art in 2002, Paul Cocksedge has become famous as one of London's wittiest and most mercurial design talents. This year he creates extraordinary installations at The South Bank and at the V&A for the London Design Festival.

From the playfulness of his Styrene lamps, to experiments with creating rain-free environments, he remains committed to the idea design requires a 'climate of freedom'. For the London Design Festival 2010 he joins the company of Zaha Hadid, Marc Newson, Amanda Levete, Shigeru Ban and David Adjaye, creating this year's Size + Matter commission Drop. If that wasn't enough, he's also creating a one-night-only installation A Gust of Wind as part of this year's V&A programme.

William Shaw interviews him for the London Design Festival.

Drop is a piece of design that comes with a narrative. A huge coin has somehow dropped from the sky onto the South Bank. You're inviting onlookers to participate in that. Where did the idea spring from?

There were many reasons behind it, really. I sometimes like to let my mind go to make-believe-land, because it's a really interesting way to find inspiration, to find a beginning or to search for a shape, or to find ways of people interacting. You separate yourself from the day-to-day. If you start to daydream, sometimes something quite interesting happens. And I think with this project that process really helped bring it all together.

But even before the initial inspiration I was trying to think of a piece that had layers to it. One layer is that it was a very beautiful and intriguing object. But with a lot of my work I try and get people to interact. I found it really fascinating, the idea that we could produce a work with magical properties - its scale, its finish and its magnetism. It can bring people enjoyment from the interaction, but it also translates that enjoyment into helping other people.

Magnetism has always fascinated me. I've always wanted to play with it. And this object, we now have this other story. People can plate it with copper and the copper comes from the coin.

You have experimented with fiber optics and there were experiments to create rain-free zones with electrostatics... You enjoy playing with these tangible aspects of science in design?

Definitely. I studied science, I wasn't very good at it at A Level but I was always very curious. It was only when I was doing my art course that I began to get my textbooks and try these things out practically that I realised that these things were much more exciting than they were in textbooks. Design and sticking pennies onto big things don't usually go together but trying to make all these things fit makes people happy - and makes me happy as well.

Drop is kind of like a wishing well. For every penny stuck onto it, a pound will be donated to Barnardo's. Why was it important to add that charitable element to it?

When I was looking at the site where this piece was going to be I realised that whatever I put there it couldn't just be something that was beautiful - that aspect only connects with certain people. I wanted a way of playing with that beauty. On the one hand I was creating something that was serious, this amazingly formed material, but then it also becomes fun through the act of people giving the pennies to it. And actually the penny isn't a penny, it's a pound. So the fun side of the piece actually reaches out and helps other people which is quite... London really. It wasn't just about producing something that would make designers say, 'That's fantastic! Look how that's made.' It's more to do with thinking about what London means to me.

When it comes to making a piece like this that's very visible, with new materials and new processes and with the clock ticking, it must be incredibly challenging at this stage.

Well, 100%. It's a big piece of work. It starts off as a three meter circle and is then transformed as a shape. It looks simple but it's obviously made in pieces so there are invisible joins. There's an internal structure so there's engineering - we've collaborated with Arup on that. There's the base, the positioning of it, the lighting of it. Also the magnetism of the piece which is actually quite a substantial task in itself - how to get the whole outer skin magnetic. All this is something that I find interesting - that designers will find interesting - but which the public doesn't necessarily want to know about. It's behind the curtains. I like that.

To justify a piece of work just because it's hard to do, that's not something I do. But yeah, there's a lot of things going on in this piece. I'm just really exited about that simple act of it taking a penny from you, which is like an invisible energy. It doesn't need any electricity. It doesn't need any power. It's this very mysterious force that we're all familiar with...

A Gust of Wind also has this playful element to it. You're taking something very hard and solid and playing with the idea of fragility.

I'm fascinated with that material. I've been to the Corian® factory and they showed me what you can do and what I found really fascinating is that you can heat it, and once it's hot you can move it and shape it with your hands. It means that it's not like glass, where only skilled craftsmen who have trained for years can get close to it. I had always thought it was quite a rigid and heavy material - which it is when you use it for things like kitchen worktops - but at the factory I saw another side to it. You can get it to be quite thin... So I was playing with that.

When I presented it to Ben and the Corian® guys it was, 'Just imagine this stack of paper, and imagine a gust of wind blows it'. It isn't complicated. It's just a light, positive, very dreamy piece. As individual objects they're also functional pieces of design. You can push a piece of paper into them and the curves hold it into place. So it's designed as an installation, but each piece is slightly unique and will be a functional object. Which I like because paper trays are usually very rigid, and these are very different.

You've talked about the importance of maintaining a climate of freedom in design. Where did that start for you?

It's from the Royal College, I suppose. We weren't told to do anything. We were given starting points and weren't told what the ending should be. We were given that space. I left college and I never worked for any designer. Joana and I set up this Studio and the way I work has always been like that. I'm just creating things because I want to do them. Of course briefs come along and they input materials and spaces... and big budgets sometimes which helps the creative process. But I think too many restrictions wouldn't really suit my way of working. I try and keep away from that rigidity.

And presumably that's a constant tension...

I don't feed off the work I've done before. Every time I get a new brief or start something new I don't have a formulaic way of working. There isn't a process. It mostly comes down to how I'm feeling or what I want to explore. As you say I was fascinated by rain for a bit so I then had to speak to different people about rain and electrostatics. On this one I'm having to worry about copper coins and brass and magnetism... and then it's Corian® and free-forming and how we're going to shape three hundred of these things. So it's not a conventional studio in that sense. There aren't zones; 'Here we do the brainstorming, here's the mood zones and there we do the rendering.' It's not now I like to work. I'm just a bit nervous about creating a structure that rules out chance encounters. We all have that, don't we?

The space for happy accidents...

Yes, happy accidents. I love those. They're given to you. I like to justify my work that way.

You mentioned the Royal College. Ron Arad tells a story of you presenting your portfolio stuffed with forged ten pound notes.

I had nothing to lose. I was a bit cheeky. I knew I didn't have the best portfolio in the world and I felt I had to do more. So I just put this envelope in that said, 'Why choose me?' When I got to the interview that's what they were talking about. It was just a way of getting noticed, but I think I've kept that cheekiness in the work I do. I like to surprise people. I like to challenge people. I like to have fun, you know?

Photo of Paul Cocksedge ©Mark Cocksedge
Below: Watt ? 2003, a lamp created by Cocksedge which uses the conductive power of graphite. To turn the lamp on you must draw a completed circuit.

Find out more about Paul Cocksedge's Size + Matter installation Drop
Find out more about Paul Cocksedge's V&A installation A Gust of Wind
www.paulcocksedge.com